MotoGP Argentina: Miller ‘riding on a knife edge, not one overtake’

Ducati’s Jack Miller had a weekend to forget in Argentina after a difficult qualifying and penalty drop were compounded by a 14th place finish.

The Lenovo rider initially looked strong in Saturday’s opening free practices but with the compact schedule, due to late arriving freight at the Termas de Rio Hondo Circuit, he was unable to master the perfect setup for his Desmosedici around the bumpy 4.8km layout.

“We were in a tricky situation,” Miller explained on Sunday night. “We were missing time, pace throughout the whole weekend. Chasing our arse a little bit and we went one direction, then in the warm up we tried something, really satisfied with it, tried another direction for the race and it was just missing feeling. I was able to ride in a relatively safe way, let’s say, the whole race. I gave the maximum I could, I pushed every lap to the end but I missed that confidence the whole way through.

“I wasn’t able to make one single overtake throughout the whole race. Simply because I just didn’t have the confidence in the front to go offline or try and force a pass.

“I had to kind of wait for guys to make mistakes around me and then try to capitalise on that. I felt like I was trying to manage the tyres really well and hopefully that would help me towards the end. I was able to come back towards those guys at the end but I wasn’t able to pass. Simple as that. I got behind Oliveira and that’s where I stayed. A very disappointing day.”

With teammate Pecco Bagnaia openly suffering and frustrated on Saturday and Pramac’s Johann Zarco having similar issues throughout the weekend, did the Australian feel the problems were intrinsic to the GP22, or simply a result of the bumpy and unused South American circuit?

“It’s difficult to